Will you opt-out of allowing Google to service your Feedburner account?

Wednesday June 6th, 2007

After the feed stats company Feedburner is acquired by Google, the AdWords integration to feeds became the dominant discussion. Great! Your blog business can now be managed from a single Google interface right. This also means that your blog traffic data change hands. Feedburner puts a notice in their sign in interface saying that you have a right to opt-out, delete your data. If you take no action by June 15, 2007 (9 days as of today), the rights to your data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google.

“Service of FeedBurner publisher accounts will not be interrupted as a result of the acquisition by Google. You will have a 14-day interim period ending June 15, 2007 to opt-out of allowing Google to service your account. If you take no action by June 15, 2007, the rights to your data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google. Opting out will terminate your user agreement with FeedBurner, permanently delete your FeedBurner account, feeds, and all related statistical data and history, and prevent the transfer of your data rights to Google. To opt-out, contact us via accountx@feedburner.com, provide your FeedBurner account Username, and request to have your FeedBurner account deleted. We will contact you at your registered email address to confirm your deletion request before completing it.”

When YouTube acquired by Google no one asked YouTube users if they wanted to delete their YouTube account or videos. The same thing applies to all those small fish social data aggregating web 2.0 companies eaten by the whales (e.g., recently StumbleUpon swallowed by Ebay). It is nice of the Feedburner team that they are asking if we want to delete our accounts. Although I think that this notice is a legal enforcement to Feedburner since their clients are not only individuals but also companies.

So will you delete your Feedburner account?

I don’t think I will. Although I want to have control on my data, I can’t resist using Feedburner services currently (because of some embedded protocols). But watch us for an alternative action soon. I think this is an important moment to pay attention to how inhumane the data ownership laws in USA: One who aggregates data owns it.

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5 responses to “Will you opt-out of allowing Google to service your Feedburner account?”

We consumers must OWN physical assets or we will BE OWNED by those who do.

Let us organize and begin to purchase some physical Sources of Production which we can hold between ourselves under a special contract that requires each and any new user to become a partial controlling shareholder in those Sources (or in new investment of similar Sources) each and any time that consumer pays a price above cost for those goods or services.

This will cause ownership, and therefore control to flow according to the amount each consumers is willing to invest (as what is usually called ‘profit’ at that transaction would be an investment in that consumer’s name toward more physical Sources of that kind).

Why will that not work?

Wouldn’t it be great if we (the consumers) OWNED a cell-phone network? Price would approach cost and control would already be in the proper hands.

It could be thought of as PropertyLeft, as it is a generalization of the GPL from our prophet Sn. IGNUcius into the physical realm.

Thanks for responding, but your stance is not clear to me, so I want to make sure you understand my claim.

Do you agree or disagree that the Users (or the more traditional term “Consumers”) should be in control of the physical Sources of Production? This is, of course, in glaring contrast to the Marxist dream of Worker control.

This not just a stab-in-the-dark without purpose. User ownership of physical Sources creates an interesting dynamic where costs are ‘internalized’ (eliminating externalities); profit becomes meaningless except as User growth; abundance and low prices are never a threat; employment is understood as a cost to be minimized, not a need in itself.

When Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen speak of Freedom in the virtual realm, it is always “User Freedom” that they are concerned with. Free Software enables every User to gain control of that information, and is not restricted to the Authors (original investors) or to any other group such as qualified Workers or any withholder of intellect.

I hope we can work together to write an inter-owner trade agreement in the spirit of the GNU GPL that can be applied to some collectively owned physical Sources so that ownership (and hence control) will flow to each User as anything they pay above cost (what would usually be called profit) would become an investment for them in more physical Sources so the society that forms around that joint-ownership will be truly free.

Thanks for your time. I will continue to check back here for your reply, but email me directly if you prefer.